


Behold! The Night Mare

by softmoth



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Choking, Demon Dean, Dreams, Dreams and Nightmares, Dreams of Hell, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, M/M, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-24
Updated: 2016-05-24
Packaged: 2018-06-10 10:02:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6952129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softmoth/pseuds/softmoth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After being raised from Hell it's not uncommon for Dean's dreams- more specifically, his nightmares- to feature Castiel. Prominently. But when Dean starts dreaming from the angel's point of view, he struggles to decipher what this new development could mean. </p><p>(Also, why the hell does Dream-Cas-Dean feel so disgustingly <i>tender</i> when he's around Dream-Dean? Man, sleep is confusing.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Behold! The Night Mare

**Author's Note:**

> Any feedback or critique is very much appreciated!

Castiel isn't sure what burns more- the bitter drops of demon’s blood forced into his mouth and stinging his upper palate, or Dean Winchester's hands on his face, folding around his neck and pressing him flat on his back into the thorny wires of the upright torture rack. The feathers of his wings catch and pull, bending sharp and wrong behind his back with a resounding crunch, and he tries to scream in pain but no sound comes forth. The pain is too great, it exceeds vocalization. It burns through his folded, aching wings, lights up the nerves along his shoulders and spine, sparks a fire in his stomach that’s so low and so deep and… aches? Yes, aches. Aches so sweetly.

 _No,_  Castiel feverishly thinks, sweat dripping from his temples and running into his eyes as the back of his head collides roughly with the rack. It’s hot, it’s so hot. His mouth is dry and tastes rotten, like the sulfur that oozes from Dean’s coated fingers, cracked and bleeding and dripping more poisoned blood down the soft, open cavern of Castiel’s esophagus.

The angel gags wetly, but cannot suppress a moan at the cloying metallic sweetness accompanying the decaying drip.

Dean’s nails are jagged, and they hurt with each internal swipe, but the blood’s taste teases him and Castiel again wants to scream.

 

After an eternity, Dean withdraws his fingers. Castiel tries desperately not to swallow, unwilling to ingest the deliciously foul mixture entirely.  
  
His body is slick with sweat, and it sticks to his tattered clothing until suddenly, it doesn’t. He's naked, how that happened? The wired rack bites into his flesh, his wings, everything burns white hot and stabbing. He's burning up. His eyes roll uselessly in his skull, unable to stay focused.

Everything is bright, too bright. Dean is somehow towered above him, the dark cast of his shadow the only cold place in Hell as it falls over Castiel’s trembling form.

 _I am on fire_ , Castiel thinks. _My flesh is burning up. My eyes are melting away._

And Dean reaches forward, takes Castiel’s face in a bloodied hand, and his fingers are a vibrant rusted color that crackle with each flex as he yanks Castiel by the chin, forward and up, so they’re eye to eye. And Castiel, he’s incandescent. He's going to go blind. He knows he will. He doesn't care.

"Look at me." Dean’s rumbling command strikes Castiel like thunder. A second hand wraps itself around his throat. His soft vessel trembles, and for what?

Castiel is not his vessel- he a cyclone, a maelstrom, the whipping squall of winds strong enough to tear flesh from bone. 

A storm does not fear thunder.

Dean’s fingers tighten and when the bright light dims, the first thing Castiel sees is the tight set of his jaw.  
  
“Look. At me.” Dean repeats. Low. Angry.

"I am," Castiel gasps, swallowing desperately against the increasing pressure around his throat and oh. The sulfur-blood slips down, scorching like vomit, when his throat opens to speak. "I am...oh... I am trying."

His speech is too slow, and it sound like he's pleading. His head swims, there isn't enough air, and it take every iota of effort in his body to concentrate his watering eyes on Dean, beyond Dean. He sees the man's soul, precious and dim, the fragile spirit he’d been tasked to save from this awful place. To raise up on high. It’s so close now, _he_ is so close now.

He will not fail.

Dean presses his body forward, seemingly unbothered by the thorny pricking of the rack’s wires as he leans against Castiel and bears down. One hand pins the angel's wrists to the rack, stretched up above his head, and the other remains clasped around Castiel' throat, slowly restricting the pull of air into his vessel’s lungs.

Castiel can see Dean now but he can't keep the image steady, the demon blood and deprivation of oxygen already taking effect. Dean’s grinning expression seems to drag with a blurry halo every time he shifts, leaving a carbon-copy ghost of himself wherever he moved- a faded apparition that dissolves as quickly as it comes.

He’s speaking, but Castiel can’t seem to make out the words over the pounding heartbeat that thrums in his ears.

 _His lips seems so soft,_ he thinks deliriously, _so easily parted. If I could only just-_

Castiel wants to reach out, to touch that soft mouth, to pass his hands through it and reach inside, grasp the soul that cries to be gathered up and cradled close and safe.

But Dean keeps his wrists easily pinioned, the fragile bones of his vessel grinding together painfully when Castiel tries to yank them away.

Dean’s eyes are wide and wet, and he smiles with all his teeth.

"Aw, I’ve got a fighter- that's real cute. Been a while since anyone’s tried, never fought somethin’ with wings before… you wanna try me, rooster boy?"

Dean doesn’t ease up on the pressure, but he angles his hips forward to grind purposefully between Castiel’s spread legs. The firm press is rhythmic, a steady thrusting that makes Castiel strangely weak in the knees and he huffs when he feels Dean thicken, grow harder against him. Taking his pleasure like Castiel is nothing. The fabric of his jeans is rough, it scratches Castiel’s bare thighs- a strange thing to notice among all his vessel’s other, more urgent pains.

The grip around Castiel’s throat eases up just slightly, just a fraction, as Dean’s voice drops to a murmur:

"You into a little cockfighting, huh?”

His bent wings give a single, defeated beat as he flutters them uselessly against the rack. Dean laughs aloud.

There's bile in Castiel’s throat, or maybe it's the blood, and it threatens to come up but he swallows it down, all of it, doesn't think, doesn't challenge. Dean’s lips are parted and his soul sings for Castiel, reaches out to him. Castiel lowers his eyes, lets his vessel’s mouth go slack, opens for Dean like the man seems to want.

_So close. Just a little bit closer…_

Entranced and lost in his power play, Dean unconsciously eases off the angel’s throat, leaning forward to meet the proffered lips that part so nicely beneath his own. He's smiling. Castiel can’t see it, but he can feel the smirk as Dean accepts his kiss, sharp teeth sinking down and biting hard.

The Righteous Man is kissing Castiel, licking into his mouth like it’s his to own. It’s frightening. Terrifying. Wonderful.

Castiel can feel how Dean’s soul burns and it’s somehow hot, hotter even than Hell around them, hotter than the tongue swiping at Castiel’s teeth. And Castiel is ready to take that soul, to grab it, to pull it out and away and up, up _up_ -

 

Dean shoots up straight as he startles awake, wide-eyed and gasping. The bed sheets pooled around his waist are soaked in sweat and he’s panting hard, like he just ran a mile.

The motel room is dark, but a thin yellow light slits from the bathroom, its door slightly ajar. He can hear water running, too loud for a sink faucet. A shower. Sam is taking a shower.

Dean wipes a hand across his face, wet with perspiration (and ONLY perspiration, tracking down his cheeks and his chin...it’s just sweat, he’s a just a sweaty guy, he doesn’t have _those_ kinds of nightmares...not anymore…)

He sighs, pushes away the covers, and starts to methodically strip the bed, the process so familiar now that it’s little more than rote memory to untuck the sheets. Ball up the blankets. Wad them into a disgusting linen lump, one that he then tosses into the corner of the room, leaving for some unlucky cleaning staff to find later.

Dreaming about Hell is nothing new. Dreaming about torture is nothing new, either.

There’s a sick churn in Dean’s stomach as he lays back down on the now-bare mattress. Dreaming about torturing Cas...that’s also nothing new.

What is new, though, is dreaming about BEING Cas, being tortured, while in Hell. Getting flayed on the rack by his own visage was disturbing, to put it mildly. Seeing it all from his friend’s point of view, even more so. Nevermind the part where he had literally started humping an angel of the Lord.

Or had he? Did it still count as Cas if he was inside the angel’s head, too? It’s a whole new level of fucked up, another sugary layer of “really goddamn screwed”-icing frosted over the demented cake of issues that was Dean Winchester’s ruined psyche.   

Amazing, Dean thinks, how nothing is broken but every part of him hurts.

Also, now he kinda wants some cake.

The bathroom door opens and the shaft of light widens, spills over Dean’s prone form. For a single fluorescent light bulb it's impossibly bright. Dean groans, flipping around with his back to it.

“Fuck, Sammy, kill the lights. M’sleepin’ still.”

He hears Sam move around the room, barefoot and quiet, grabbing clothes from his duffle bag.

“Yeah, bullshit. I heard you having a…” Sam trails off, movement pausing. Clears his throat awkwardly.

Dean wants to roll his eyes, he knows what’s coming. “Don’t.”

“Was it, um. Was it a bad one?”

“Seriously, don’t.”

“Look, Dean, I have them too, alright? I know what it’s like to-”

“You don’t know SHIT, Sam!”

Dean doesn’t mean to shout but the anger comes quick, and in the wake of his nightmare he’s still too raw to tamper it down. But when he sits up and turns to face Sam, the pinched eyebrows and shock-sad squint of his brother’s eyes are enough to cool his rage a bit.

“Sorry. I’m sorry, Sammy. It’s just... there’s nothing to say, ok? I’m tired. And I told you already. I don’t remember it, not now, not when I’m sleeping. Nothin’. Don’t even know what my pansy-ass is whimpering about when I wake up. So, I don’t think about it. And neither should you. Now,” Dean dramatically flops on his back, throwing an arm over his eyes so they’re covered by the crook of his elbow. “Turn off that damn light bulb before I shoot it. And your face.”

Sam snorts. “Your aim isn’t nearly good enough.” But there’s a pause, then a click, and then blissful darkness. Dean lowers his arm. Maybe now, with the steady hum of the motel radiator, the scratchy mattress under his back, and the familiar rustle of Sam dressing in the dark, he’ll be able to catch some normal Z’s before it’s time to hit the road again.  
  
Weird-ass dreams can go to Hell.

 

**Author's Note:**

> (I'm pretty sure there's no lore about demon blood tasting good, and that it doesn't actually harm angels, but I am clinging to the sorry excuse that it's a dream sequence so it's Dean's brain's fault for being wrong.)


End file.
